Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Friday April 11, 2008 @02:19PM
from the lookin-for-a-free-ride dept.

Cutie Pi writes "Katherine Seidel, mother of an autistic child and an avid blogger has been subpoenaed for her "family's bank records, tax returns, autism-related medical and educational records, and every communication concerning all of the issues to which [she] has devoted [her] attention and energy in recent years." The lawyer in question is representing a mother who is suing Bayer for $20M with the claim that mercury in their vaccines caused her child's autism. In her blog Seidel has spoken out against lawyers trying to cash in on thimerosal lawsuits, noting that the thimerosal-autism link has been debunked in several studies. But Seidel herself has had no direct involvement in the lawsuit."

Go to the subpoena. [neurodiversity.com] Go to page three, and read the list of names. Some highlights in this legal document: Killer of Sacred Cows; the Misbehavior of Behaviorologist (discussion board), meow meow meow... blah blah blah, and a HYPERLINK written out.

These people are angry and want something to take their frustrations out on. The fact that no studies provide any evidence of a link between the vaccines and autism is an minor inconvenience to be ignored!

religion: While the news probably didn't reach your mom's basement, the antagonism between "science" and "religion" only started in earnest in the last two hundred years. For the thousand years before that, science and its precursors were thoroughly entwined with religion, both supported by and supporting in exchange the dominant religion of their land. Any stores you have to the contrary are, sadly, more properly called "Atheist Mythology" than anything else.

It's even worse than that. The anti-vaccine movement operates much like a cult. It takes people who are in a situation where they feel isolated, helpless, and angry, and they give these people a strong support community that will not only alleviate their feelings of isolation and helplessness, but give them a boogeyman to lash out at. Once someone is in a community like this, they will continue to fight for the cause no matter how much evidence is stacked against them.

It's really sad, because these people are risking allowing some truly horrible and often fatal diseases to come back decades after they were virtually wiped out. I'd much rather have a minuscule and totally unproven chance of a few kids getting autism, which is not fatal, than have a virtual certainty of thousands of kids getting fatal and/or permanently disfiguring diseases like pertussis or polio.

While I have no doubt that those whose children are severely autistic are in a totally different world, my son is mildly autistic (high functioning autistic), and I would take that over polio any day of the week.Your argument is absurd and designed to appeal to raw emotion. Hundreds of kids get killed in traffic accidents every year. I would agree with the assertion that cars should not be banned so long as you sign your kid up to be the first to get nailed by a car. No? Oh, I guess a few hundred kids i

The anti-vaccination websites sustain their belief by systematically excluding anyone offering counterevidence from the domain of acceptable sources. Pharma studies can't be trusted because they have a profit motive. The CDC is in hock to big business. The "medical establishment" wants to make money giving your children unnecessary shots. In fact, the only person you can trust is the guy writing the website.

This is the sure sign of a crank. It is possible that all these people are wrong--science has had much more spectacular failures in the face of clear evidence. But there is no such thing as a multi-million person conspiracy....

Looking for those links is entirely natural. But fingering vaccines has real and terrible consequences. Millions of children die worldwide every year from childhood diseases that we've eliminated here through vaccination. Now, because these websites are frightening people about vaccination, we're seeing a resurgence of those diseases. People are dying from them again, and others are being left with permanent health impairment. Leaving children unvaccinated means going back to

* Leg braces and iron lungs for people with polio (57,628 cases in 1952)
* Encephalitis and sterility for people with mumps (200,000 cases a year in the 1960s)
* Congenital rubella syndrome for children whose mothers contracted the illness during pregnancy.
* Blindness, pneumonia, encephalitis, and death--one per thousand--for people with measles (nearly 1 million cases a year in the US before vaccines).
* Encephalitis and pulmonary hypertension for people with whooping cough--thanks to people who don't vaccinate their kids, in 2001, 17 people, mostly infants, died of pertussis (200,000 cases in 1940).
* Cardiac arrest and paralysis for people with diptheria (207,000 cases and about 15,000 deaths in 1920).

The vaccines scare us because the diseases don't. And they don't because of the vaccines.

>The vaccines scare us because the diseases don't. And they don't because of the vaccines.

Right you are! I am old enough to remember the polio epidemics in the summer and being scared shitless of winding up in an iron lung. Swimming pools and libraries got closed and people were afraid to go to the ballgame. These Luddites should go live in Afghanistan or The Sudan with their like-minded brethren.

Right you are! I am old enough to remember the polio epidemics in the summer and being scared shitless of winding up in an iron lung. Swimming pools and libraries got closed and people were afraid to go to the ballgame. These Luddites should go live in Afghanistan or The Sudan with their like-minded brethren.

I really don't know what my problem is. I'm not even close to being old enough to remember polio epidemics, I only know of polio via the history books I was forced to read in school. And yet, despite

You're correct, but that's another issue. What matters here is not the merits of the lawsuit. It's the ability of plaintiff's lawyer to drag in a blogger who's only relationship to the suit is that she's spoken out against it. That would be disturbing even if the case had obvious merit.

I just read her motion to quash the supoena, and it has a very interesting claim: there's no indication if it was every approved by a judge. If that's the case, you have to wonder what stupid games this lawyer is playing.

She's being subpoenaed, not sued. To be subpoenaed means that you have to turn over records or give testimony. She's not a party to the lawsuit. She doesn't have to pay any money or change any of her postings.Don't get me wrong -- it's still a pain in the butt and it's wrong and probably an abuse of the legal system. But her freedom of speech isn't at risk. She could respond by just giving the documents requested. She shouldn't have to do so, but her speech is in no way at risk.

She's been given three weeks, give or take, to review virtually every electronic communication or posting, or scrap of paper, that has passed through her life in the last 4 years, and package it _all_ to take the deposition. She isn't even being offered a witness fee.

It is not "probably" an abuse of the legal system. It is one. It is also overly intrusive, and has a number of other "defects".

The last time I saw a subpeona like this, the lawyer quickly backed down, because he realized we were going to ask for sanctions for abuse of process as soon as we walked into the courthouse.

Sure, fair enough. But the great-grandparent hinted that she was being sued, which is a very different proposition. Being sued would be completely unconscionable.Third-party witnesses get subpoenaed all the time. From here, it sure looks like this subpoena is abusive. But I can imagine other contexts (where she had secret documents from the PharmaCos related to the case or something) where it'd be reasonable. THIS subpoena looks abusive and I'd hope that the court looks at sanctions closely. But, not

I was in a somewhat similar situation, although I was directly involved in the lawsuit. I was asked to submit to the deposition all online writing I'd done in the last 6 years. As I recall, I asked for an extension after delivering 1500 printed pages from one blog and telling my and the opposing council that those 1500 pages represented well less than 10% of what I'd written over that period. (I'm verbose.) They quickly restricted what, exactly, they were requesting, to strictly what was relevant to the

Don't get me wrong -- it's still a pain in the butt and it's wrong and probably an abuse of the legal system. But her freedom of speech isn't at risk. She could respond by just giving the documents requested. She shouldn't have to do so, but her speech is in no way at risk.

It's called a chilling effect [wikipedia.org]. If this is upheld, it will send the message that if you criticise pseudo-science, you are in danger of being dragged before a court and having all your personal details examined for no good reason. It's an undue burden on speech that many people will not be willing to take just to speak out against some kooks.

I disagree totally. Yes, they are not asking for her web site to be closed down. But did you actually read the subpoena [neurodiversity.com]?

They want her bank statements, her canceled checks, her tax returns, and any documents even vaguely related to any issue covered on her web site, including correspondence with her physicians, attorneys, and any member of the government. Imagine how you would feel about giving the last seven years of your correspondence and financial records over to a hostile party.

And, of course, they want the right to grill her about anything related to any of that, while she pays a couple hundred bucks an hour in legal fees. And for why? Because she has blogged critically about them.

That doesn't just have an effect on her right to free speech. It has an chilling effect [wikipedia.org] on every blogger who sees themselves as a citizen journalist. Anybody who wants to blog about something important -- or even read blogs like that -- should oppose legal harassment like this.

This does put her free speech at risk. That is not necessarily through a process that would order her to stop. Instead, this is a case of harassment and invasion of privacy as a result of her having exercised her free speech rights. It may well be an attempt by Mr. Shoemaker to discourage her from speaking. She, or someone else considering speaking on these matters, may be discouraged from doing so for fear of the costs and invasion of privacy due to such a subpoena.

This is the worst of what our legal system allows. Now this woman is forced to hire an attorney just to defend her right to free speech. It makes me sick!

This is not what she is doing. Her right to free speech is not being interfered with. In fact, what the lawyer in question seems to be seeking is the documentation on which her free speech is based, so if anything this might be closer to a press shield law issue.

Except that all the information Kathleen posts is supported by publicly available information, and Mr. Shoemaker no doubt knows this. The subpoena was issued 4 hours after Kathleen posted information about the money Shoemaker makes by losing vaccine injury cases. See her motion to quash [neurodiversity.com].
Make no mistake, some people would like to silence Kathleen and at the same time indulge their delusions that she's part of an government/pharma/illuminati conspiracy. What has happened is clearly a threat to freedom of speech. Imagine if lawyers could just issue subpoenas if they see an opinion on the web they don't like.

Lawyer: I'll give you something else to do then. Bring out all records since the second you were born, package them up, and come all the way out to me so that I can verbally harass you. That should keep you so busy that you don't have time to say stuff I find inconvenient. It should also keep you so busy that you can't actually do anything else with your life (like work, take care of your kids, etc) either.

It's not about denying someone their rights.

It's about exerting social influence on them to distract/prevent them from exercising those rights.

And, failing that, it's about creating pain points when one decides to exercise those rights. Like electroshock therapy. Sure, nothing's STOPPING you from doing "Activity A", but if you get a painful jolt every time you do "Activity A", you'll soon find that you either reduce or completely stop doing "Activity A".

Sure it does. This lawyer has the government on his side. Because he asked them to, the government is forcing this woman to collect and submit all of this information. It's a significant hardship and can most definitely create a chilling effect.

It's incredible the amount of unsubstantiated credence that some parents of autistic children will give to the thimerosal hypothesis. For example, Jenny McCarthy (who has an autistic child, and I have sympathy for her since it can't be easy) was on Larry King Live the other day, sititng next to someone who was there to debunk the supposed link between autism and thimerosal. His arguments were grounded in science, but she would not be moved, and she was extremely animated and emotional over any suggestion that thimerosal isn't to blame.

I suppose, in some sense, that it's like telling her that her religion is wrong.

There's also the issue that if she can't blame someone else the only obvious alternative is to blame herself. Something few people would willingly face the possibility of doing.
I find it difficult to believe that the parent of an autistic child is to be "blamed." At this stage in the game, no one knows what causes autism so it is too early to asses blame.

When something tragic happens it's a natural human response to try and assign blame. It doesn't have to make sense. It might not even be conscious, but people like to have reasons for things.

As a father of an autistic child, I can totally understand an emotional and illogical response to the suggestion of a Thimerosal/autism link. Believe me, at first it had me somewhat enraged as well. In light of some other drugs that have come under fire in past years for either under-delivering on promises or outright harming people that take them, it only makes sense that some people are going to look at a statement like that and say "Oh, look, something *else* the FDA missed!"

The problem is most people nowadays seem to either 1) lack the capacity to think for themselves (either mentally or as a result of time constraints, etc.) 2) lack the desire to think for themselves. After all, why bother doing that when someone else has already done it for me?

I also think that both sides are sitting too much in the area of absolutes. It seems that most scientists insist that *every* vaccine is safe for *every* child, and the inverse is true for those who think Thimerosal causes autism. Obviously, just the mere presence of Thimerosal doesn't cause autism, because if it did we'd all be autistic. But at the same time, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the large number of vaccines that are administered at once nowadays, along with other possible factors, are at the source.

Autism can be very difficult to work with as a parent, and I hope they find out the cause/cure soon. But flying off the handle, on either side, isn't going to get it done.

Scientists don't "insist that *every* vaccine is safe for *every* child". They insist that the small number of side effects in the small number of children is far better than the massive side effects (like death) of having to treat the diseases in large populations including children. They are fully aware that there are going to be a tiny number of kids that have negative reactions to vaccines. That doesn't outweigh the number of deaths that are prevented by getting rid of these diseases.

And these are planetary efforts. Sure in the US most of these diseases are not going to kill your kid (unless they're born prematurely), but outside the US these childhood diseases are much more serious. Vaccines are for the good of mankind.

No, it's not meant to be for your own good. Mass vaccination policy is in place for the good of the population. If 95% of people get vaccinated for Pluto's Spotted Canker Sores, then 5% of the population remains a nice breeding ground for it, allowing the disease to sustain itself and mutate into more dangerous varieties. This is somewhat similar to the avian flu threat we face today, which is largely caused by the lack of genetic diversity in chicken populations. The uniformity of chicken immune systems acts like the uniform lack of vaccine in humans, allowing new disease strains to come into being and multiply in a friendly environment before spreading to the rest of us.

The reason you, your children and everyone else in your community needs to be vaccinated is real simple. The biggest risk is losing something called "herd immunity" where today most of these diseases that are being vaccinated against are rare and not life-threatening in the US could spiral out of control if they were allowed a safe haven.While today a case of pertussis is almost unheard of this was not the case 150 years ago. But at the same time it cannot be assumed that this disease is "extinct" in any

"'cause we know how well those pan out. "According to wikipedia 300-500 million people died of smallpox in the 20th century. It was irradicated via vaccine in 1979.

Ok, first of all Thermisol is a preservative. It doesn't have to be in vaccines. It did not do anything to help your body. And autism cases have increased since they removed it.

"If it works, your kid had it and won't get Pluto's Spotted Canker Sores."If it works your kid gets antibodies and won't get paralyzed by Polio.

"If it doesn't, why do I have to take it anyway?"This is a common argument. Social Darwanism would seem to say this would be desirable. If you're not intelligent enough to recognize the value of vaccines then your children should be free to die from early childhood diseases and no longer populate the gene pool with your particular brand of ignorance.

Except that this doesn't happen in the US the fact that everyone else is vaccinated means that the chance of your child getting a horrible disease is pretty low. You can piggyback off the immunity of others.

The problem is that your child becomes a host for disease. Those bugs are free to use your child to breed and spread. They're also able to use your child to mutate into new strains that can bypass the antibodies created by the vaccines in the healthy population. And your kid can wipe out 5% of the kids in the US. That's why vaccines are mandated.

The main reason that this is an issue is because we really don't have any horrible childhood diseases anymore, so no one remembers why we started this vaccinating stuff in the first place.

The biggest problem with the situation is that the over-reactive parents are making the scientists defensive, and it becomes impossible to objectively discuss the evidence without appearing to "cave in".Autism rates over time do not match vaccination rates over time, nor do they match vaccination rates across national boundaries, nor do they match national Thimerosal usage rates. However, that does NOT mean that a vaccine didn't trigger a particular case of autism. It could very well be that the child wou

While this a is a clear case of trial lawyers using our broken tort system discourage free speech, at least it's not being carried out by a government trying to silence someone with the full weight of the law. Unlike Mark Steyn's persecution before the Canadian Human Rights Commission for the charge of "hate crimes." That commission explicitly stated that there's no right to free speech in Canada:

well ok, they can have a 2 minute deposition wherein they ask her 'are you being paid by the pharmacutical companies?'. Depositions are given under oath (or, at least, lying counts as perjury). If they subsequently believe that she may have lied and can build a reasonable case to show that that may be the case, they can issue a more wide-ranging subpoena later. As it is, they're swanning over and demanding that she prove that she isn't in the pocket of the pharma companies - note that that's asking her to p

The lawyer may be a sick farker, but the judge who allows this, without sanction, is even sicker.

Third party subpoenas should be looked at under a microscope for relevance. This lady didn't manufacture, sell, or administrate the vaccine in question. What does she have to do with the underlying lawsuit?

Subpoenas can be issued without any judge looking at them; they're filed with the court by the attorney and then served. It's up to the poor slob served to file a motion to quash (which she has). Punishment through subpoenas and the discovery process in general is nothing new, alas.

The thing to understand about subpoenas is that in most states, once litigation commences, the lawyers (as officers of the court) for each side have the power to issue subpoenas to anyone who might have information relevant to the lawsuit.

The major limitations on such subpoenas are ethical limitations (attorneys' behavior is governed by a complex but far-from-bright-line set of rules) and the rules against discovery abuse, which can be found at Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b) and elsewhere. The decision to grant sanctions is up to the discretion of the court, which basically means that an appellate court will go with what the judge decides, unless, for example, the discovery sanction is death.

However, it looks like Ms. Seidel is in good hands lawyer-wise. Her motion to quash the subpoena (the way that one tries to avoid having to comply) hits a lot of different theories and defenses, including the most important one: that the subpoena won't lead to discoverable evidence.

Postscript of Surprise: The plaintiff's attorney filed the suit in the Eastern District of Virginia, a federal court whose nickname is "The Rocket Docket." The consensus among attorneys is that once you file a case there, you should go ahead and say goodbye to your family for a few months. Rather than let litigation drag out for years, the Rocket Docket judges set -extremely- aggressive discovery schedules. Filing any complaint there is ballsy, no less a thimerosal one, since whether thimerosal causes autism is far from crystal-clear. Long discovery would mean more time for the plaintiff to gather evidence (and for new autism studies to come out).

I am going to sue Micro$oft and that will allow me to subpoena CowboyNeal's recored relating to any treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, psychopathology, and substance abuse. Like duh its obvious why his claptastic history would be pertinent.

17. The subpoena was not issued in good faith because its manifest purpose is not to elicit information relevant to determining Bayer's liability for Wesley Sykes' medical and developmental problems, but to indulge his parents' and their attorney's curiosity about my motivations and associations; to aggressively communicate their suspicion that I am not merely a fellow citizen who openly, intelligently and conscientiously disagrees with their public statements and actions, but a covert agent of the government, the pharmaceutical industry, or some other hidden force; to disrupt my relationships with my associates and news sources; and to intimidate, harass and retaliate against me for exercising my constitutional right to report and express opinions about matters of widespread public interest in which plaintiffs and plaintiffs' counsel are involved. These are not legitimate reasons to invoke the judicial subpoena power. Indeed, in so doing, Mr. Shoemaker has engaged in a sanctionable abuse of his authority as an officer of the court.

I have little to no sympathy with Seidel. Thiomerisol, a mercury(!) compound, deals enormous damage
to a child's (and an adult's) brain. Basically it boils down to a needle full of lobotomy.
If she is defending Thiomerisol then either she hasn't done her homework or knowing the facts
she is on their payroll.

What the fuck hyperbole train did you just ride in on?

The amount of ethyl mercury in a dose of vaccine is tiny, and ethylmercury [wikipedia.org] is eliminated so quickly (half-life 18 days or less) that it does not

Well, if Silent Spring was shown to be a crock, and people still bring it up as a bogeyman.... then yes, it's just like the vaccines (shown to be a crock, but with people still bringing it up as a bogeyman...) This just makes the comparison more valid! =)

There is a really terrible mistake going on here. You really can't link vaccines to anything. There are many different kinds of vaccines produced by many companies. It is really very bad to lump them all together.

So would a company produce 'a' cheap unreliable vaccine of poor quality in order to maximise short profits, well the history of corporations would tend to indicate that it is likely to happen. Would a corrupt corporation attempt to hide this behaviour to attempt to hide it's bad vaccine behind al

Here is how Dixy Lee Ray (with Lou Guzzo) described events (Trashing the Planet, page 69) [note: Ray has the timing wrong, the spraying was stopped in 1964, not the late 60s]:

Public health statistics from Sri Lanka testify to the effectiveness of the spraying program. In 1948, before the use of DDT, there were 2.8 million cases of malaria. By 1963, there were only 17. Low levels of infection continued until the late 1960s, when the attacks on DDT in the U.S. convinced officials to suspend spraying. In 1968, there were one million cases of malaria. In 1969, the number reached 2.5 million, back to the pre-DDT levels. Moreover, by 1972, the largely unsubstantiated charges against DDT in the United States had a worldwide effect. In 1970, of two billion people living in malaria regions, 79 percent were protected and the expectation was that malaria would be eradicated. Six years after the United States banned DDT, there were 800 million cases of malaria and 8.2 million deaths per year. Even worse, because eradication programs were halted at a critical time, resistant malaria is now widespread and travelers could take it home.

Oh boy, the DDT myth again. Amazing how someone can mention DDT spraying in Sri Lanka and yet fail to mention that Sri Lanka resumed spraying but the mosquitoes had developed resistance [timlambert.org] to DDT, presumed to be as a result of wide scale agricultural spraying. That's one of the the real reasons for the third world cutting back on agricultural use of DDT: it left them with DDT resistant mosquitoes. Other countries stopped agricultural use because they had to export food to countries that didn't want DDT-sprayed

DDT didn't cause the thinning. It's still banned though, because people fear global warming and other such nonsense.

"In the 1950s [wilsoncenter.org], the World Health Organization (WTO) dropped DDT on the island of Borneo to control mosquitoes, resulting in two unexpected events. First, homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT; and second, and more troubling, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague because the DDT affected the island's animal nutrient cycle. Small animals (lizards, insects, etc.) became sluggish, while larger animals such as cats ended up with toxic levels of DDT from consumption of smaller creatures. Eventually, all the cats died, leading to an increase in the rat population and an outbreak of bubonic plague. The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats to deal with the rat problem, which, in turn, addressed the bubonic plague problem."

Homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT

That's not logical in the slightest, hardened hornet's nests should dry out and get lighter, not heavier. Even if DDT somehow manage to double the weight of a hornet nest, if a house had almost enough hornets nests to collapse the roof by weight, the house would be uninhabitable anyway.

The houses really collapsed because DDT killed the parasitic wasps that kept certain thatch eating caterpillars under control. I read a

Ecosystems are complex things and killing all the insects is such a huge thing that it's going to have some complex repercussions.

Because of that complexity, to disrupt an ecosystem a chemical doesn't mean needing to kill everything, all it takes is to remove one crucial element to do so, just as removing a Keystone [wikipedia.org] from an arch or dome will bring the whole thing down.

Except that there is no evidence that DDT caused the thinning, and, in fact, the shells have continued to thin long after DDT use had stopped.

No, they didn't, once you account for the time it takes for the DDT to leave the food chain. Birds of prey consumed DDT by eating other things that had absorbed DDT from the environment, perhaps by themselves eating other things, so until all the DDT is gone from the environment, and every animal up the food chain that had absorbed some was dead, the birds were stil

"Global climate change" is a serious issue we need to study. There is NOT a consensus in the scientific community as to whether or not we contribute to it, can do anything about it, or if it's even a bad thing.

Except, of course, that there is a consensus on these things among scientists, as far as scientists can ever be "in consensus". Only a few nutjobs and industry propagandists disagree.

There are films from the 40s and 50s where trucks would just drive down neighborhoods spraying DDT. They'd do it at public pools. No one thought anything of it. We way over used DDT.

In the wake of the book, people overreacted and moved to basically ban DDT outright. Instead of spraying in a controlled manner (such as, say, only where mosquitoes are a problem), we stopped spraying it altogether despite the fact that it was incredibly effective and cheap.

The book it's self was fine. As I remember Rachel Carson didn't argue to ban DDT but to be much more responsible in it's use. That really isn't what happened. It's that legacy (overreaction causing serious other problems) that people generally mean when they talk about Silent Spring being a crock.

While your well-developed argument was initially convincing, I believe you may be wrong. Put simply, a vaccine works by causing the immune system to respond without the need for you to get a full-blown infection/disease. Many, if not most, commonly-used vaccines put a live virus in your body, albeit one that has been grown in a way to ensure they are weaker. Some use a closely-related but less dangerous strain. Regardless, the idea behind a vaccine is to elicit a response from your body's defense syst

Actually, the immune system does not react to the virus itself, but to the proteins around it. For a vaccine to be effective it's therefore not necessary to contain the virus, but only its protein coat.

However, many (most, all?) vaccines are produced by producing the virus with its coat and then disabling the virus, keeping the coat or at least its proteins intact.

Mercury may be used to disable some viruses in this way, thus ending up with a mercury containing vaccine.

It doesn't matter how long you can yell "correlation != causation", because the interesting logical rule to know here is that lack of correlation implies lack of causation.
A "boatload of children go from being normal to starting to show symptoms" at the same age and at the same rate amongst groups that get the vaccines or not.

It's not just that there is no evidence vaccines cause autism; there is extremely strong evidence that they definitely do not cause autism. If they did, kids who got th

What do you think the cost-benefit ratio is for reducing measles, mumps, polio, small pox, diptheria, strep pneumonia, N. meningitis HPV, etc? Between that and no known link between vaccination and autism, I think such a belief against vaccinations is one not based on evidence and one that is not reasonable.

Unfortunately people are not rational, and when they're child is stricken by such a disorder, rather than simply accepting that in a world full of luck good, bad and indifferent, they want to strike out, to make someone pay. There are plenty of things in the world that cause damage to children, but other than the odd bad batch, vaccines are not among them, at least as far as autism goes.

We got really flimsy evidence of this link, which they trumpeted (because it was "sexy" and brought in eyeballs). When these studies were basically proven false, they got very little mention.

So now what you see is every once in a while a story is done about these things. They show some doctor saying "that's nonsense, you should be more afraid of scarlet fever." Then you see 4 crying mothers talking about how doctors ruined her kid's life. They are given equal weight.

So people don't get the right picture. They get a skewed one. They glamorize the "poor mothers" who get outpourings of grief. They play on people's fears. They don't deal with the elephant in the room.

The people who do these kinds of suits are either really stupid, or not finished grieving. The people that take it this far (make sites devoted to it, sue everyone involved, etc) are quite probably just in the "anger" stage of grief. They are looking for anyone or anything to blame so that it's not their fault, it's not random, etc. People prefer concrete incorrect answers (it's the mercury) to abstract correct answers (some kids just develop that way).

They don't talk about how these kind of things could be because of grief. They don't talk about how there is basically no evidence. They try to get viewers. The lawyers go for the long shot cash and the good publicity. Both are taking advantage of people operating out of grief.

It's not a finishing, but an acceptance. When people get into this kind of mode, their progress through the grieving process stops. It's easy to make your whole life about this, and you get stuck in that pain and unhappiness.

Say she wins this. Say she gets a constitutional amendment to ban these kinds of additives forever. Where does that leave her?

She won't have her kid back. She won't have her adopted mission of getting rid of this stuff and making things "right" because she will have done that. She'll

I think it should go further, to the baseless lawsuits we see, that seem, at best, a legal strategy to humiliate or inconvenience someone or some organization or company into just paying to make it go away. The problem here is, of course, that vaccines have done an enormous amount of good, and I'd wager probably beat out antibiotics in the benefits to the general welfare of humanity.

The long and the short is that a courtroom isn't the place to do scientific research, nor is it the place to review such research. The research is pretty clear that there is no link to autism. That should be the end of it. It shouldn't be about who can produce the most emotional appeal. It shouldn't be about who can send out the most threatening or largest quantities of subpoenas, it shouldn't be about who keep can keep discovery going forever, it should be about the facts. If the facts aren't there, the case should be tossed out. That's sort of how it works in criminal cases, where a grand jury convenes to determine whether there is, in fact, sufficient evidence to proceed. I think that should be mapped over to the civil system so cases like this (and even cases like SCO's IP claims) simply don't get into a courtroom until a preliminary jury can be convinced there's even a case there.

There's never going to be a perfect legal system, but we can sure as hell reform the system sufficiently so that nuisance cases never go anywhere. And make no mistake, no matter how angry and distraught these parents are, that's exactly what it is, a baseless nuisance case, an abuse of the system, a waste of money, and I would support, despite the teary-eyed mothers who clearly have many problems to deal with, seeing them pay the defendants' fees, not because I like drug companies, but because I think the only way the system is going to be brought back down to earth is by making those who weight down the system with frivolous cases pay dearly for wasting the court's time.

You're not going to convince ME there was no link. I was there. Show me all the studies showing red is really green you want and I'll be convinced that the researcher is color blind or dishonest.

You're evidently (and self-admittedly) irrational about the subject. I understand your feelings, but feelings don't determine facts. You can rage, ignore, or refuse to let facts influence you, but they will remain facts.

If Autism is ever to be cured or prevented, by the way, it will be by somebody who respects facts. This vaccine controversy is a huge distraction from what we should be doing.

You said she was diagnosed with mental retardation, but you realized she was autistic, which has confused me. Was diagnosed with autism or do you think she is autistic despite a diagnosis of mental retardation (these are not the same entities)? Autism is usually characterized by decreased communication skills and decreased socialization. You haven't described anything like that, so she may not actually be autistic, or you have just not described those.
It should also be noted that for autism to be diagnosed, the symptoms have to start by three years of age, I believe. If childhood vaccines are given frequently during this time, it is not unlikely that a significant number of people will notice an association between a vaccine panel and the first onset of the symptoms of autism by mere chance alone. I'm sure this could even be quantified, but I don't have the time.

You're not going to convince ME there was no link....Show me all the studies showing red is really green you want and I'll be convinced that the researcher is color blind or dishonest.

So you are saying you will ignore any evidence and all reason?

My friend Mike had polio (which has been completely eradicated in this country so there's no excuse for polio vaccinations here any more) as a child and he walks with a limp and one hand doesn't work well, but he has a productive job.

Polio is still found in some of India, so I think the idea is to vaccinate until it is eradicated. Also, the morbidity is unacceptable for a preventable disease. You are saying, effectively, a little limp and loss of the use of a hand never hurt anyone.

Small pox and diptheria are gone, no need to vaccinate against them either.

Small pox vaccinations stopped in the 1970s, several years after it was eradicated. Diptheria isn't eradicated.

AFAIK there is no vaccine for meningitis.

There is for bacterial meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitidis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningococcus [wikipedia.org], for bacterial meningitis caused by streptococcus pneumoniae strains: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumovax [wikipedia.org] and for bacterial meningitis caused by haemophilus influenzae B: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemophilus_influenzae [wikipedia.org].
I am not saying that vaccines can never do any harm, but that it is rare and grossly outweighed by the benefits. I seriously doubt your daughters mental disorder was caused by MMR vaccine (which has been well studied and refuted, and the original paper showing the link has since been retracted, but given your own admission of not believing any published evidence to the contrary, I imagine this is just wasted time on my part. However, I would like you to consider what ill may have fallen on your other daughter had neither of them been vaccinated.

Hold on. Do you really believe that in less than 24 hours, after one shot of thimerisol your daughter became autistic? I'm sorry, but I do think that you are forcing a reason into a vacuum of understanding.

I'm a father of a 2 year old (who has had all the vaccinations), I also spent 7 years working in the area of mercury control, including thimerisol. Hg is nasty in most forms, but typically it takes a period of long exposure and bioaccumulation for someone to be affected. There are the cases where Hg containing substances have a lethal effect, but in these cases the effect is so potent that they would impact every person that came into contact with it, and we know from the statistics that this is not the case with thimerisol.

Think about this statement, my grandmother was perfectly fine and then one day I bought her new alumnium pots, within a week (more than 24 hours) she was diagnosed with Altzhiemers...it must have been my fault!!

that is NOT what happened, stop it. You ahve completely misunderstood it.

That gets modded informative? A note to the wise moderator: "Informative" presupposes the contribution of information. Whereas what we have here amounts to an authoritative-sounding chin-jutting, "Is Not!" with nothing of any material to back it up. Children argue like this, and it should be pointed out that an adult who argues like this is likely to maintain other over-simplified thought patterns which will naturally extend to thei

It was not because of the thiomersal that the mother of with the autist daughter was awarded, but because the daughter had a rare form of mytochondrial disease, and the subsequent treatment and vaccine given to her worsened her condition. NOTHING to do with thiomersal per see. It pays to read the judgment before accusing other of not being informative.

Furthermore after 2001 , NO REDUCTION in autism was observed despite lessened to null use of thiomersal. And study were made it has no autism impact. How many more evidence you need ? Finally you are omitting a very important fact from your "ethyl mercury is toxic" meme. 1) how long does it take to metabolise from thiomersal to ethyl mercury 2) how does it relate to ethyl mercury half life in the body 3) how does it relate to the minimal quantity of thiomersal in vaccine ? 4) how is the quantity of ethyl mercury due to vaccine at ANY time in comparison to the dosis at which it starts affecting the body (and yes there are quantity which are perfectly tolerable, and even quantity of Eth-Hg which can be totally ignored). and more importantly 5) how does it relate to parents saying that within 24 hours their kids got autism !!!!